


Apex Predators In Island Ecosystems (Freeman et al., in press)

by Sixthlight



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jurassic Park Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Animal Death, Animal Harm, Booker is here but he's more of a strong cameo, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-atypical violence, Community: theoldguardkinkmeme, Dinosaurs, Gen, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, what I'm saying is: yes the dinosaurs eat someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28728588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: Palaeobotany PhD student Nile Freeman and her supervisor Joe al-Kaysani are invited to billionaire Stephen Merrick’s new project – a theme park full of cloned dinosaurs. What couldpossiblygo wrong?
Relationships: Nile Freeman & Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 50
Kudos: 353





	Apex Predators In Island Ecosystems (Freeman et al., in press)

**Author's Note:**

> I like Jurassic Park a lot and it is thematically aligned with The Old Guard in that Capitalism Is The Real Villain, but I have some issues with its presentation of dinosaurs (and scientists). Strongly worded fic to follow.

Nile didn’t really start to believe there was anything to this whole dinosaur park thing until they were in Costa Rica, getting into the helicopter that was going to take them to the island. At that point, it was real, or they were being kidnapped. It was just really hard to believe that anybody wanted to kidnap a semi-famous (as in, people who weren’t scientists might have seen the _National Geographic_ article) palaeontologist and his PhD student.

She’d have found that easier to believe back at their main Tunisian field site – not _likely_ , but very slightly easier to believe. Probably because health and safety paperwork made you think about every little thing that could possibly go wrong.

“I hate helicopters,” her supervisor Joe said amiably, as they ducked to climb in. “What about you, Nile?”

“Never been in one,” she yelled back.

“That makes two of us,” said the only other guy in the passenger compartment, in a strong maybe-Italian accent. They all got distracted with seatbelts and headsets for a few moments, and then they were rising from the ground. It was incredibly different from a plane, dynamic and jerky in a way Nile hadn’t been expecting. And _loud._ She put her hands in her lap, so she didn’t clutch at anything.

“This doesn’t seem so bad,” said the other passenger to Joe. He was a white guy maybe Joe’s age, a few years older than Nile, with a nondescript dress sense (though Nile had mostly got over expecting Europeans to be fashionable, after two years of living in the Netherlands) and kind eyes. “Why do you hate them?”

“The absolute certainty that we’re suspended in the sky from a very big fan, and if it stops spinning, we’re probably gonna die,” said Joe. “But on the scale of things that might kill me, they’re not that high up.”

The Italian laughed; Joe was being charming, and he was _good_ at it. (Nile had suffered through a totally inappropriate crush for a solid month at the start of her PhD before she realised it was fifty percent his natural personality, and fifty percent a genuine and admirable ability to be interested in other people.) “Good to know. I am sorry to say I don’t know who you are. Mr Merrick did not tell me he was inviting anybody else on this, ah, assessment.”

“Joe al-Kaysani,” Joe said, holding out his hand. The helicopter wasn’t big – Nile was squashed in thigh to thigh with him, and he and Italian Guy had had to interweave their knees to fit. He barely had to move his hand out of his lap. “Late Cretaceous theropods and aquatic environments. This is Nile Freeman, my student – she’s our palynology wizard. What about you? I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Oh, you are palaeontologists?”

“You’re not?” Nile said, surprised; she had assumed – from Joe’s expression he had too – that whoever else was coming along would also be in their field.

“No, I’m a bioethicist. My name is Nicolò diGenova.” He regarded them both curiously. “I will tell you upfront that I have serious reservations about this project, to the point that I am hard-pressed to imagine what I can be shown that will change them. But I think Mr Merrick sees this as a challenge, and Dr Kozak has always…well, I will not speak poorly of those who are not here, before you have even met them.”

“So you think it’s real?” Joe said at once, holding the other man’s gaze. “You’re sure?”

Dr diGenova – Nile had to assume he had a PhD, anyway – raised his eyebrows. “You’re not, and yet you are on this helicopter?”

“Considering how many hours I’d normally have to spend writing grant proposals to get the equivalent of this consulting fee,” Joe said wryly, “I didn’t have to be sure to agree to come. Plus, it’s the end of our field season. What makes you believe it’s real?”

“I know the scope of Meta Kozak’s ambitions,” diGenova said. “And Stephen Merrick’s fortune. Between them there is likely something to it. Not – quite what we might imagine, perhaps. But _something_. And the ethics matter for something small as much as something large.”

“Given the way Merrick talked,” Nile said, “I’m gonna be _very_ disappointed if this turns out to be scaly chickens and not much more. Nothing in that for me.”

“Well,” said Joe. “We’re all going to find out one way or the other in about an hour and a half.”

*

“Holy shit,” Nile said, three hours later, when their open-topped SUV came into the view of the sauropod herd. “Those are _not_ scaly chickens.”

Dr “call me Andy” Black, the senior animal handler, laughed. She was a white woman with a no-nonsense haircut and wiry arms that said she had a lot of time to work out, or more likely did a lot of physical work. “No they’re not. Most dangerous animals on this island.”

“I saw the list,” said Joe. “There was a _Tyrannosaurus_ on there. Cliché, but I’m still curious. You have more trouble with the sauropods?” He squinted. “What are they… _Camarasaurus_?” He shook his head. "What am I saying. 'Oh, what are they'. They're _living dinosaurs_." He laughed, and clapped Nile on the shoulder. She was shaking her head in amazement.

“That’s what we’re calling them,” said Dr Black. She was grinning with the delight of someone who'd been waiting forever to show other people this. “’Course, since the good doctor is creating them from blood samples, we can’t link them back to species identified from bones…we can only guess. Merrick calls the big girl a _Tyrannosaurus_ because he knows it’ll get people excited. My wife has her doubts.”

“Dr Ngo? We met her back at the labs. Dr diGenova was talking to her.”

Dr Black nodded. “I oversee enclosures, she’s our behavioural expert.”

“ _Camarasaurus_ is Late Jurassic,” Nile said. “If I remember correctly. That’s a _long_ way from the Late Cretaceous. Before my time – I’m all about flowering plants.”

“I’m not in charge of coherent ecosystems.” Dr Black shrugged. “I’m in charge of handling the animals I get given. But no, there’s no single time period represented here.”

“So there’s amber samples from different locations.” Joe narrowed his eyes. “Not a single formation. Mr Merrick implied it was a single formation.”

“Mr Merrick has an unfortunate habit of saying what he thinks people need to hear,” Dr Black said, mildly. Her eyes were anything but mild. “I’d keep that in mind if I were you.”

“You never answered the question about the sauropods,” Nile reminded her.

“No, I didn’t. Well, you guys do fieldwork in Africa, right?”

“North Africa,” said Joe. “If you’re about to give us a metaphor about big animals, the only ones we ever have to worry about are Nile crocs.”

“Point taken,” said Dr Black. “When I think of Africa fieldwork I’m always thinking sub-Sahara, because that’s where I did mine. Anyway, herbivores are the most dangerous, because they can afford to fuck you up. And these ones – they’ll do it not even on purpose; one flick of a tail could break somebody’s neck. Nearly did once, and that was a juvenile. So yeah, the most dangerous. The carnivores, even Queenie – that’s what we nicknamed the big girl – if they’re not hungry, they don’t care. And we don’t let them go hungry. They’re not _safe_ , but they don’t keep me up at night.”

Nile rested her chin on her folded arms, leaning on the upper structure of the SUV. “I can see a couple of different species in there…can you tell us about them?” She couldn't keep the eagerness out of her voice.

“I’ll give you the whole tour,” said Dr Black, “and then we’ll head back to the labs and see whether Dr diGenova wants to come out and see the animals.”

*

She was true to her word; they visited all the enclosures, although in the _Hypsilophodon_ one Nile didn’t see anything except rustling vegetation – the little creatures were hidden in the low bushes. The more theropods they saw, the more the frown on Joe’s face grew. When Dr Black said that was it, and they should head back – the weather was turning – he finally asked the question Nile could tell had been lurking on his lips for the last hour.

“None of them are feathered,” he said. “Why’s that?”

Dr Black exhaled. “Oh, there we go. Kozak and some of the others have had some throw-down arguments about that.”

“If they’re not feathered, they’re not real dinosaurs. I know Merrick said they were using bird DNA for the gaps –”

“I’m not a geneticist,” Dr Black said, starting the vehicle, “but from what I understand…it’s on purpose. They’re taking the feathers off.”

“What?!” Joe and Nile both turned to stare at her.

“Merrick wants monsters from the past. Not a scientifically accurate zoo.”

“Then they are just scaly chickens.” Nile folded her arms. “No matter what names you give them. That’s…awful. If this bioethicist guy believes in what he does at all, he’s going to hit the roof about that.”

“And Merrick thought _we’d_ sign off on it,” Joe began, more and more heated. Dr Black held up a hand. “Before we go down that path, there’s something else I have to show you.”

She took them to a small enclosure on a hill up above the main buildings – they looked close, but Nile could see the road, and it would be a slow half-hour back. Next to the small building, it had a high fence, maybe twice as high as Nile’s head, though it was light wire.

“They’re good jumpers. They can even glide a little,” Dr Black said, noticing her glance. “Come in. Do what I say and you’ll be safe.”

“Uh…”

“Maybe Nile should stay out here,” said Joe.

“If you’re going in, I’m going in, boss.”

Joe frowned at her, but didn’t stop her following Dr Black inside.

The enclosure was like nowhere else on the island. It had greenery – all non-flowering plants, Nile saw, and approved – but it was full of ropes, balls, half-destroyed dog toys. And of what registered at first to Nile’s eyes as birds, _big_ birds. Not ostrich big, but turkey big. Then she caught the shape of the jaws, and the placement of the arms, and –

“Ohhhhhh,” Joe breathed out. “Now _this_ is more like it.”

“These are my girls,” Dr Black said proudly. There were eight or ten of them, none more than waist-high at the head but _long_ , and covered with beautiful black and white feathers, with red crests. She whistled, and they came forward, cocking their heads curiously. “Sorry, girls, no treats right now. This is Joe and Nile. They’re friends of mine.”

“Uh, hello,” Nile said. The dinosaurs chittered and chirped. It was like a flock of crows, only…more. They were _smart_. It was…disconcerting.

“Hello there,” Joe said, in the voice you used to talk to pets, or small children. “Dr Black –”

“Andy, for fuck’s sake.”

“Andy, how close can I get?”

“Keep your hands down, you can take a step forward. They get exited with hands out – they think it might be food. I’m trying to train that out of them. They won’t _mean_ to hurt you, but you still don’t want a bite.”

Joe took that step. More chittering and chirping. They weren’t at all afraid. “ _Velociraptor_? Hmm, no. _Luanchuanraptor?_ ”

“You’re the expert.”

“Good choices of vegetation in here,” Nile said. “I don’t like how many flowering plants there are on the rest of the island. With Jurassic species, who knows what that’s doing to their respiratory systems…they didn’t evolve with this much pollen around.”

“Why aren’t these ones on display?” Joe wanted to know. He was crouching down, studying their feet. The raptors bobbed and wove around him, curious.

“Because they’re too much like birds,” Andy said, dryly. “They were one of the first successful clutches.”

Light raindrops were starting to fall. Nile flipped the hood of her jacket up. A raptor snapped at the rain, then made an unhappy noise. She couldn’t help laughing. They were so aware of their surroundings. Like parrots.

“Ugh,” said Andy. “The heavy stuff will be here in a second…come inside, we can wait out this band of rain.”

*

There wasn’t much to the outbuilding attached to the raptor enclosure – a small room with a coffeemaker and a fridge, and an even smaller bathroom. Nile went to use the facility.

“It’s a longdrop,” Andy warned her. “And the water’s off a rain tank, so just use it to rinse your hands off.”

Nile laughed. “That’s fine – not a lot of flush toilets in the field.”

“You can’t get many people here who complain about that,” said Joe.

Andy rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t get me started. Merrick – well. Don’t get me started.”

Andy made coffee, and they sat around and picked her brains about the animals. It was less glamorous, from her point of view, than _living non-avian dinosaurs_ – Nile was still processing that – should be. A lot of deaths they couldn’t explain. She thought Nile might have a point about the vegetation.

“But hell, it could be almost anything,” she said with a sigh. “They’re from another era. Could be their gut microbes, could be the oxygen levels…”

“Those haven’t changed _that_ much since the Cretaceous,” Nile said.

“What about all those metre-long dragonflies and shit?”

“Different period,” Joe said. “Much older.”

“Huh.” Andy sipped her coffee. “I don’t pay a lot of attention to old things, I have to say. I worry about what’s in front of me.

The rain only got heavier. Nile looked up at the tin roof. “I thought this was passing through.”

“So did I.”

A second later, the light went out. The hut had windows, but the rain was so heavy it dimmed things to twilight. Everybody got out their phones. Andy scuffled around and came up with an electric lantern. “Here we go. Shit, that’s probably the power line from the main site gone down – it’s happened before. That means the creek’s rising…there’ll be outages all over the island.”

“Wait.” Joe sounded tense. “You’ve got electric fences, I saw them –”

Andy waved a hand. “Don’t worry about the animals. Something like this, they’ll all hunker down. Worst thing we have to worry about is Queenie eating something she shouldn’t. Turns out they _are_ scavengers, you know, whatever species she really is. She’ll eat _anything_ if it looks dead-ish. I’d walk through her enclosure naked but I wouldn’t lie down and go to sleep.”

Joe made a soft, disbelieving noise. “You know, half of me is losing my mind over what we could learn – and half of me is thinking, what does it even mean? We don’t know what their social systems worked like. We don’t know how they worked in _context_ , in an ecosystem. They’ve been raised from the dead and it means everything and it means…nothing.”

Nile snapped her fingers. “Boss – sorry, we gotta focus. The enclosures have electric fences, don’t they? And the power’s going down. What’s it mean for _us_ right now?”

“Means we should wait it out,” Andy said, draining her mug. “The creek’s going to be rising, there’ll be wires down…it’d be dumb to go anywhere. It’s not going to be comfortable, and I can’t promise anything great in terms of _food_ …most of what we keep here is for the raptors…but we’ll be fine.”

Nile could hear the raptors from in here; they were squawking to each other every so often, audible over the rain. They sounded unhappy.

“The glamorous consulting life,” Joe said to Nile, waggling his eyebrows. “Look what we’re missing.”

“I’m going to call Quỳnh, see what they think.” Andy picked up a walkie-talkie from a rack. “I’m surprised nobody’s contacted us yet.”

Nile opened the fridge. It was mostly full of boxes of – “Are those _mice_?”

“Raptor food,” Andy called back. “Some lizards too. I did tell you.” Her walkie-talkie crackled. “This is Raptor House, checking in, over.”

“Andy,” came a voice over the radio. It sounded like Dr Ngo, the other behavioural expert. Nile had heard her speaking to Dr Kozak about the juvenile hadrosaurs they'd been shown, but they hadn't been introduced. “Some of the main park systems are going down. How are things at your end? Over.”

“Power’s out, fine otherwise. The girls are having a bad day, you know how they hate a downpour. We’re all snug in the hut. Might have to stay here overnight, if this keeps going. Over.”

“That might be a good idea,” Quỳnh said, and then added something quick in what Nile presumed was Vietnamese. She’d shut the fridge to look at Andy. At that last sentence, whatever it was, Andy’s face went very still. Nile saw Joe noticing it too. He’d sat upright, from his casual sprawl. “Over.”

“Love you too, honey. Over,” Andy said, and turned the walkie-talkie off.

“What was that?” Joe asked her at once. “The last thing.”

“Merrick’s – getting impatient.” Andy’s face was still very calm. “Probably not a bad idea for us to be here while he calms down. That’s all.”

“Dr diGenova is still down there.”

“He’s a colleague?”

Joe shook his head. “No, we met him on the helicopter. But he seemed like a decent guy.”

“If your boss is that bad, it’s not fair to leave anybody with him, decent or not,” Nile added, because it was true, and Joe nodded.

Andy opened her mouth, and the walkie-talkie crackled. “Andy, you had best answer me _right now._ ”

She sighed, and picked it up. “Raptor House. What’s the problem, Merrick? We’re waiting out the weather here. Everything’s fine. Over.”

“The _problem_ ,” squawked Merrick, “is that I am your _employer_ and I want you and those scientists back here right this instant –”

He went on for a solid minute. Andy’s expression grew increasingly less impressed. Nile could hear other voices in the background, not shouting, but certainly emphatic. As Merrick said _over_ , there was a noise that might have been a pained, cut-off yell.

“Sounds like everybody’s getting a bit worked up,” Andy said, her hand now white-knuckled on the back of a chair. “As I _said_. We need to wait out this weather to return safely. The track isn’t gravelled, and it’s steep. Over.”

Merrick started yelling. Andy switched channels, cutting him off. Joe and Nile were both on their feet.

“What the hell is wrong with your boss?” Joe demanded. “If he wants us to give a good report on this place, he’s not going about it the right way.”

There was a flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a rumble of thunder. The raptors shrieked in chorus.

“No shit,” Andy said. “Quỳnh, checking in again, Merrick’s losing it. Over.”

They all waited. And waited. No response came. There was another flash, and boom.

“Fuck,” Andy said, and kicked the table leg. “Alright. You two stay here, there’s no need –”

“Not a chance,” Joe and Nile said at the same time. Andy eyed them, and then nodded once.

“Alright. I hope you don’t mind a bit of water.”

“We’ve had worse,” Joe said, and Andy opened the door into the storm.

*

“Look, tell us,” Joe yelled over the storm. “Your boss made it sound like this was a media thing, he wanted some good quotes from scientists. He’s not acting like this is a media thing. So what is it?”

Andy was driving them – slowly, and with her hands clenching the steering wheel – back towards the main compound. The road down the hill was narrow, and unbarricaded on the cliff side, and very nearly a river. Nile clutched the car and reminded herself that she’d been on shittier roads, in the field.

“That’s what he told you?” Andy yelled back. “Christ. No, it’s not a media thing. The board made him bring in consultants. They’re worried the whole thing is going to fall over before we even get any tourists here. And they’re not wrong to worry – it’d be fine if we’d stuck with the little guys, but the big ones…they’re unpredictable, and they’re hard to keep healthy.”

“Okay,” Nile said from the back, raising her own voice, “but losing his shit is still a dumb way to get us to say what he wants.”

“He’s a control freak who thinks he’s God’s gift to biotech, that’s all.”

“I thought it was Dr Kozak who did the cloning,” said Joe.

“Yeah, but he hired her, so in his mind that means he gets the credit.”

Nile and Joe made disgusted noises at the same time. Andy barked a laugh that sounded like agreement.

They made it across the creek, which was foaming up almost to the boards of the small bridge, and Andy started to put her foot down as they came up the small rise – then slammed on the brakes. Nile was thrown hard against her seatbelt. Joe yelped in surprise. Nile opened her mouth to ask what had happened, and then saw there was someone right in front of them, barely visible through the rain: Dr Ngo, waving her arms frantically. She ran around the side of the car and hopped in the back seat, next to Nile.

“Andy!” she said. She was still wearing a lab coat, and absolutely drenched, her hair sticking to the sides of her face. “Andy, don’t take them back. It’s not safe.”

“What the fuck?” Andy turned, hooking an arm around the back of her seat. “Not _safe_?”

Dr Ngo nodded, gulping air. She must have run to get to them. “Dr diGenova – he got into an argument with Merrick, while you were up at the raptor house. Merrick was trying to get him to say how impressed he was, and then the power started to go down, the backup generators weren’t coming on, Booker was frantic…and diGenova said he wasn’t impressed, there was no way he could tell people this was a good idea, what he’d seen told him it wasn’t ethical, not how the animals were being treated or how the park was being run.”

“He said on the helicopter he was going to be hard to convince,” Joe said, his brow furrowed. “But if it was me, I would have saved that for when I was back on the mainland.”

“Me too,” agreed Dr Ngo, “but Merrick was pushing – you know how he is, Andy. Anyway, we don’t have time for this, what happened is he had Keane march Dr diGenova off to lock him up in a room somewhere, Keane was carrying a _gun_ , and we can’t take these two back there when he’s acting like a tinpot dictator.”

“Last thing I told him was that we weren’t coming back,” Andy said, throwing the car into reverse. “So, let’s not.”

“What about diGenova?” Joe argued. “We’re just gonna leave him there?”

“Merrick’s not going to have him _shot_ , but we gotta let him cool down!”

“Andy!” Dr Ngo yelled, and Nile saw why – the creek was up over the bridge now.

“Fuck!” The brakes went on hard again.

Something crackled; it was a walkie-talkie in Dr Ngo’s pocket. She picked it up. “This is Quỳnh, over.”

“Hey, it’s me,” someone said, clearly talking quietly. It was a man’s voice. “Did you get to them? Video shows the creek’s up. Over.”

“We just found that out, and I think we’re on the wrong side. What’s happening? Over.”

“They’ve locked the Italian guy up. If you come round the back I can do something with the cameras there, but the power is down to the whole park. You’re not going to be able to open the gates to go to any of the secondary sites now. And this weather isn’t clearing up anytime soon. Over.”

“Fuck,” Quỳnh said, over him. “Copy that, thanks, Booker.”

Nile let out a shaky laugh. “You know, when we got on the helicopter I thought it felt a bit like being kidnapped. I thought I was being _paranoid_.”

Joe’s jaw was set, the way it did when he was _really_ angry. “Is there another way off this island?”

“There’s a boat three times a week,” Andy said. “But they don’t sail in storms. And you couldn’t fly safely in this, either.”

They all looked at each other.

Andy shook her head. “I’m not going to make you go anywhere, but I think somewhere in the main compound Merrick doesn’t know you are is the safest place for you to be. If this blows through, we can put you quietly on the boat on Monday and let him…do whatever he’s going to do. Probably just assemble the staff so he can yell at us more efficiently. Seriously. He’s all bark.”

Nile saw Joe glance at her, then back at Andy. “All right.”

“Boss,” Nile said, leaning forward. “I can take care of myself. Maybe better than you can, if there’s idiots running around armed.”

“Doesn’t mean I have less of a responsibility for you,” Joe said.

“Better?” Dr Ngo - Quỳnh – raised her eyebrows.

“I did a hitch in the Marines,” Nile explained. “Before university.”

“Well, I _hope_ that’s not going to be useful,” said Andy. She drove the car forward, and then sideways, parking it in the forest at the side of the road. “Okay. Everybody put your sneaking caps on.”

They got out of the car.

*

Nile wasn’t sure how sneaky they were actually being, but she guessed it was better than coming up in a motor vehicle. The rain had let up for the moment and everything was humid. The forest was alive with birdsong and the whoop of monkeys. It reminded Nile that the dinosaurs they were keeping here weren’t just out of time: they were being introduced to an entirely new ecosystem. If they really wanted to look after them, the park would have to wipe out the ecosystem of the island and cultivate one that resembled that of the Cretaceous. And Jurassic.

She wondered whether Dr diGenova had thought of that, when he’d said _unethical_. In her book, it certainly was. This wasn’t a small zoo, it was a whole island. Just because the introduced species were cloned dinosaurs didn’t mean they weren’t being introduced to an ecosystem that hadn’t evolved to handle them.

“And you’re totally sure nothing’s going to get out,” Joe was saying to Andy.

“The small ones don’t need electric fences to keep them in, and the big ones – you’d hear them coming, believe me,” said Quỳnh.

“Good. I don’t want to take specialising in theropods as far as getting eaten by one.”

“I wish I could feed Merrick to a theropod,” Andy muttered savagely. “He’d make a good snack for Queenie.”

Nile stopped. The forest noises ahead of them had started to go quiet, and if she listened –

“There’s something coming,” she said. “Running. Can you hear it?”

Everybody looked at her wide-eyed until she said “Humans, I mean, it sounds human,” and then they were all diving off the narrow path. Nile could feel her heart pounding in her ears. Two men came into view. One was Dr diGenova. The other was another white man, a little taller, dressed in the tech dude uniform of black t-shirt and jeans. They were moving very quickly.

“Booker!” Quỳnh stepped out into the track. Joe followed her. The men pulled up abruptly. “What –”

A shot rang out. Nile saw Joe spin around, confused, and went for him, but diGenova was faster; he grabbed him and pulled his torso down. Two more shots.

“This way, move, move, _move_ ,” Andy snapped, and they were crashing through the forest, no hope of being silent now. There were shouts behind them. Nile felt her pockets as she ran; _nothing_ , not even a damned pocketknife. She felt shaky and sick like she hadn’t since the first time she’d been shot at, on deployment. They were _consulting_ , this was a _dinosaur park_ , what was going _on_?

They emerged out of the forest into a clearing – no, into cleared land, along a fence-line. Andy turned along it, and they followed. There’d been no more shots. The shouts were getting louder, maybe. Dr diGenova stumbled, and Nile saw Joe grab his upper arm to steady him. He gave a short, muffled cry. Joe’s hand came away bloody.

“You’ve been shot!”

“Yes,” diGenova said. He was going pale. “I noticed.”

The other man – Booker – swore profusely, or Nile assumed that was what he was doing; her French was more of the _my aunt’s pen_ and _where are the toilets?_ variety.

“Here,” Andy said, stopping at a small gate. She fished a set of keys out of her pocket. “The big ones are electric-only – these are the failsafes – come on.”

“What’s in here?” Booker asked, sounding nervous.

“This is just the pachys, it’s fine,” said Quỳnh. “It’s not even mating season, they don’t care about us.”

“I thought you said they were _Alaskacephale_ ,” Joe said.

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” said Andy. “Move!”

They piled through, and she locked the gate. “That’ll keep them for a while. Come on, come on…”

“Longer than a while,” Quỳnh panted as they moved down a hill, having to be cautious of their footing. “Keane and his men are all terrified of the animals. They won’t come into an enclosure without vehicles.”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Andy said.

“We need to stop and look at Dr diGenova’s arm.” Joe was emphatic.

“Nicky,” said diGenova. “Only the people who are shooting at us need to keep calling me Dr diGenova.”

“Okay, Nicky,” Joe said, flashing him a grin. Nile shook her head, but only internally.

It was starting to rain again.

“I can’t hear anyone,” Nile said, when they reached the bottom of the slope and started moving along the edge of a wetland. “Haven’t for – five minutes now? Maybe ten?”

“Good,” said Andy. The walkie-talkie in Quỳnh’s pocket crackled. “Dr Ngo? Dr Ngo, can you please confirm your location? We need all staff to –”

They never got to hear what they were telling all staff to do, because Booker grabbed it and chucked it into the wetland. It sank between two patches of reeds.

“Hey!” Andy protested.

“They have GPS,” Booker said. “Sorry. I didn’t think of that until now. I don’t know if they will, if I’m not there, but…”

“You run IT?” Nile asked him.

“Uh, yeah.” He gave her an uncertain smile, running his hand through his wet hair. “Although I suspect not for much longer.”

Joe had taken Quỳnh’s sodden lab coat off her and was tearing strips off it, winding them around Dr diGenova’s arm. “Anybody who’s got more medical training, now’s your chance – I’ve just got a field qualification.”

diGenova – Nicky – raised his good arm. “I trained as a doctor before I went into bioethics. But field first aid is more relevant, probably, if you’ve re-trained recently.”

“Now I feel self-conscious,” Joe joked, but he was already fashioning a sling. “Here you go.”

“Five minutes to get our breath back,” Andy said. “Then we need to keep moving.”

“Where are we going?” Nile asked her.

She bit her lip. “There’s a rest hut in the _Camarasaurus_ paddock. We can cut through the azhdarchid enclosure…I don’t want to head straight for the dock. Too obvious. And the boat won’t even be there for forty-eight hours.”

“This is _fucked up_.”

“This is a little my fault,” Booker said. “I was calling my family outside the monitored calls – yes, Merrick had us monitor calls to family, he’s nuts about secrecy. I thought I was being clever. But apparently Keane knew about it, and when I went to check on Dr – on Nicky here, that convinced them that there was some sort of conspiracy.”

“Aw, jeez, Book,” said Andy. “You were _not_ being clever.”

“Not all of us have our wives working here alongside us!”

“You’re divorced!”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to speak to the kids when I can.”

Something big moved in the wetland. Nile jumped backwards a step. It came into view; a pachycephalosaurid. They’d seen one on the tour. Up close, it was even more incredible. The big brown eyes, the bright greens and browns of its hide. It was so clearly alive and so clearly like nothing living – nothing that had lived in the last seventy-odd million years. It wasn’t paying any attention to them, browsing on the vegetation. There were others behind it.

“Time to keep moving,” Andy said.

Joe flexed his fingers. “I wish I had my notebook. Alright. Nicky, say if you’re not feeling well.”

“I’ll be fine,” Nicky said, sounding a little terse for the first time, but the smile he gave Joe was appreciative. In more than one sense.

“You know,” Quỳnh said, “Merrick always seemed to me like someone who would do the whole ‘most dangerous game’ thing if he thought he could get away with it, but I didn’t think that was _literal_.”

“What I’m hoping,” Andy said as they started to move, “is that in a few hours cooler heads will have prevailed.”

“That’s what you were saying before they started shooting,” said Joe.

“I think Mr Merrick is the kind of man who doubles down on his mistakes,” Nicky said, softly. “Not the kind who thinks better of them.”

“Cheerful,” Booker said, with heavy sarcasm.

Low booming noises were rising from the wetland, to their left and behind them.

“It’s just the pachys,” Quỳnh said. “They like to talk to each other.”

“Glad someone’s having fun,” said Joe. The rain was getting heavier.

*

They made slow progress along the edge of the wetland, and Nile was increasingly worried about hypothermia; it was getting towards sunset, and it was going to cool down, even if they were in the tropics. The only good thing was that there were no signs of pursuit. They’d heard shots at one point, but muffled, and far away – back up the hill.

“I think that’s towards the raptor house,” Andy said. She looked pale. “I hope not.”

“Better the raptors than us,” said Booker. “Sorry, Andy, but it’s true.”

“It doesn’t _stop_ them shooting us, unless you think they’re going to run out of ammo,” Andy snapped back at him.

“Again,” Nile said, “why the fuck does anybody even _have_ guns here?”

“Merrick is paranoid about corporate espionage,” said Quỳnh, “but officially they are a fail-safe, in case any of the large animals get out of control.”

“If I was up against a T-rex – or a medium-size sauropod, come to that – I’d want an RPG, not a pistol.”

“How do you know they have pistols?”

“The sound,” Nile said.

“They’re not armour-plated.” Andy sounded weary. “Hit one of the big girls in the eye, or the brain pan, you’ll take them down.”

“It’s academic,” her wife said soothingly. “The animals are the heart of Merrick’s entire investment. He’s not going to let anybody shoot them. Not even the raptors.”

Booker shook his head. “Keane and his men are terrified of the animals, I’ve seen it. I was a lot more worried before I started talking to you two.” He nodded to Andy and Quỳnh. “If they do decide to come through the paddocks after us, they _will_ shoot them. Dr Kozak will just breed more. How many dinosaurs do they really need, anyway? One is a miracle. This is overkill.”

“Then we need a better plan,” Nicky said, coming to a halt. “If you really think they will kill the dinosaurs, we can’t just use them as shields. You’re responsible for them. It’s not right.”

Joe gave him an incredulous look. “People are _trying to kill us_ and you’re worried about if they’ll kill the dinosaurs? We have to keep ourselves alive, first.” He didn’t quite look at Nile, but Nile could feel him not doing it. It was exasperating and weirdly reassuring all at once. She was sure she’d been in life-threatening situations way more than Joe had, but he was her supervisor, and he felt that responsibility keenly, she knew.

“We can’t control what they do,” Nicky argued, “only what we do.”

“We don’t have time for this right now,” said Andy. “We have to keep moving.”

“Andy’s right.” Nile put her hands on her hips. “We’re drenched, it’s getting dark, Dr – Nicky is hurt – we have to find shelter or we’re going to have much more immediate problems even than being shot at. Andy, how far away is this rest hut of yours? Can we even make it?”

“If we cut through the azhdarchid enclosure,” Andy said, “but I was hoping…that’s the one I’m most worried about. Well, that and the _Gallimimus_ , but we’re just not going in there.”

“I thought they were herbivores,” said Booker.

“They have all the worst qualities of Canada geese crossed with cassowaries,” said Quỳnh. “But sure. They eat plants. That will be a big reassurance when they’ve kicked you to death. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but they’re _assholes_.”

Booker raised his hands. “Okay, okay.”

“About five hundred metres that way,” Andy said, pointing, “and then we go up the hill to the azhdarchids and over, or the long way around.”

Nile rubbed her arms. “Well, let’s keep moving, it’s cold standing about.”

Joe and Nicky were still arguing in low voices, focused on each other.

“Walk and talk,” Andy said, tapping Joe on the arm. “Come on.”

They did; Nile wasn’t sure how they weren’t twisting their ankles. But at least they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Quỳnh was starting to shiver by the time they got to the decision point. That made it easy as far as Nile was concerned, and nobody disagreed. They had to backtrack another half-kilometre to get to one of the small failsafe gates. As they went up the hill and became more visible, Nile got more and more nervous. She asked Joe and Nicky if they would keep watch.

“I’ll take our six – I’ll go to the rear,” she said, “and you two, left and right. Just keep an eye out for any movement, anything weird. Don’t yell, but get our attention if you see something.”

Joe regarded her, his mouth quirking. “Yes ma’am.”

There were two false alarms – birds, and a lone pachy, which Nicky spotted with surprisingly good attention to detail – but they made it through the gate without incident. The rain had lightened and then stopped by then, but the sky was noticeably darkening.

“Okay, we’ll hear these guys if they come our way,” Andy instructed, “and if they do, make noise, okay? Nile, I know it’s not good military practice, but they don’t think we’re prey and they’ll leave if we yell and wave our arms. But probably we won’t see them at all – there’s only two adults.”

“Pity we missed them on the tour,” said Joe.

“Sorry, you’ll have to explain,” said Nicky. “My dinosaur knowledge stops at the ones they make children’s toys out of. What’s an _azhdarchid_?”

“Pterosaur,” said Joe. “Big, though. Giraffe-sized.”

Nicky looked up. “There is no cover on the enclosure.”

“They’re terrestrial,” said Andy. “That was a surprise. Walk around like big stabby giraffes. Giraffes crossed with storks, maybe. Mostly we feed them iguanas. And turkeys. They do like a turkey.”

“Try not to look like a turkey, check,” Joe said.

“Nile,” Nicky said, low and very urgent. “On our right, I saw something –”

A shot hit the tree above Nile’s head. She ducked. “Keep low, keep low!”

They broke into a clearing, lit by the last dim red rays of sunset. Nile was keeping low, like she’d told everybody else to, and nearly cannoned head-first into Quỳnh, who had stopped dead. It only took a glance for Nile to realise why. There were two men with guns on the other side of the clearing, with easy shots at everybody. Joe and Booker already had their hands up. She heard Andy mutter “Mother _fucker_.”

Nile could hear someone coming up on the right, probably whoever Nicky had spotted. They were being surrounded. Motherfucker, that was definitely the right word.

It was very quiet, all of a sudden, except it wasn’t; there were still the noises of the living forest further off, and the wind in the trees. But everybody in Nile’s group was silent, except for the harsh noises of breathing. Nile was clinging to those noises. God, this was _stupid_.

Stephen Merrick stepped out from between the two armed men. He looked impossibly smug. If Nile had been next to him she would have punched him in his ridiculous billionaire dinosaur-cloning face.

“Mr Merrick,” said Nicky. “I cannot say your hospitality is living up to the standard you promised, when you asked me to come and evaluate your project.”

“There’s been a few misunderstandings,” Merrick said, waving a hand dismissively. “I can see you’ve been lead astray by my unfortunately disloyal staff –”

“Fuck _off!_ ” Andy exclaimed, with feeling. “I took time out of doing my _actual job_ to show these guys around – no offence, Joe, Nile – and then suddenly you’re locking people up and having your paranoid security people shooting at us!”

“I told you when you were hired, I _would not tolerate_ breaches of project secrecy,” Merrick hissed, “much less talking to my competitors.”

“When did I do that?”

“Mr Le Livre,” Merrick said, meaningfully.

Booker jerked like someone had fired on him. “Listen –”

Nile became aware, as he started to speak, of the noises of something very large, moving through vegetation. When it came into view, at first she couldn’t put together what she was seeing. It was furry, or it looked furry – it wasn’t fur, of course – and as tall as the lower trees, a series of shapes that didn’t add up to any animal she was used to seeing. Great sheet-arms, no, wings used to walk on, an enormous head, nearly twice as long as Nile. The patterns on the wings threw off the eye; no palaeoartist had ever depicted an azhdarchid like _this_. It loomed above all of them.

Quỳnh sucked in a shaky breath. Andy didn’t hesitate. She started jumping and waving her arms. “Hey! Back off! You don’t need to be here! Yeah, you with the wings! Go the other way! We feed you on the other side of the enclosure, come on!”

Joe joined her almost without hesitation. The pterosaur make a croaking screech that might be displeasure, and started to turn. That was when the guy off to the right took the first shot at it.

Nicky said “Stop that! It isn’t –” very loudly, but was cut off by the hiss from the pterosaur, _exactly_ like a very big and angry goose.

Merrick had stumbled back a step towards their group. “Drive it off!”

“No!” Quỳnh cried, and there was another shot. Nile hadn’t seen either land; were they shooting to scare it?

It was a mistake. Its head came down, lightning-fast, at Merrick. Through Merrick, like a stork with a fish.

The noise _Merrick_ made was truly like nothing on earth. The pterosaur lifted him up, on its beak, and then tossed him off onto the ground. Blood arced through the air like rain being shaken off a treebranch. Nile forced herself to look for the armed men instead. One of them had already taken off; the others were still shooting at the pterosaur.

Nicky made like he was going to run towards Merrick. Nile went to grab him, but Joe got there first. “We gotta go, we gotta go!”

The pterosaur stumbled. Someone had hit it somewhere important, in that hail of bullets. Nile didn’t see anything more, because they were going, going, gone out of the clearing. Quỳnh was gulping loud, angry half-sobs.

Nile kept her head down, and kept running.

*

They came out of the azhdarchid enclosure onto a hill near a human-built structure. It was dark now, and it wasn’t until they piled in the door that Nile recognised it as the raptor house. They’d crossed the headwater of the creek and come nearly in a circle. She collapsed into one of the chairs.

It was eerily quiet. Andy went immediately out into the enclosure, and came back five minutes later with her cheeks wet. “They came here first. Those _fuckers_. That was just to get back at us.”

“Are any –” Quỳnh started to say, taking her wife by the forearms.

Andy shook her head. “I don’t know. They might be hiding. I don’t know.”

They leaned into each other. Nile felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up at Joe.

“You alright?” he asked quietly. “Not the field trip I told you it was going to be.”

She nodded. “All good. Or as good as any of us are. And no way in hell you could have known _this_ was going to happen.”

He squeezed her shoulder, and went to inspect Nicky’s bandage. “Andy, is there a proper first aid kit here?”

“I’ll get it.” Quỳnh stepped back, and went to the cupboard under the sink.

“It’s fine,” Nicky said.

“Uh-huh.” Joe took the first-aid kit off Quỳnh. “At least let me put a clean bandage on, okay?”

Nicky made a sort of resigned gesture with his good hand. Nile bit her lip not smiling.

“Power’s still not back on,” Quỳnh said, side-eyeing Booker. “I thought that was being fixed.”

“Ah, about that.” Booker scratched the back of his neck. He’d been very quiet, the whole way out of the enclosure. Andy whirled on him, laser-focused.

“About that, Book? You have something you want to share with the class?”

He raised his hands, which he hadn’t done when he’d had guns pointed at him. “I want to make it clear, Merrick’s still paranoid, I have _not_ been talking to his competitors – ”

“I hear a _but_ coming.” Andy folded her arms.

“It’s a long story. The good news is, we can definitely get off the island tomorrow.”

“I think we’ve all got time,” Joe said, dryly. Nicky was staring at Booker very intently. Nile would not want to be on the receiving end of that stare. She felt sorry for Nicky’s students.

“I…” Booker let out a long breath. “I’ve been talking to someone in the CIA.”

“The _CIA_?” almost everybody in the room said in bewildered unison, with notes of fresh outrage from Andy, distaste from Quỳnh, and very careful neutrality from Joe. Nicky sounded almost thoughtful. Nile wasn’t sure how she sounded. She was sure she had _not_ been expecting that one.

“This is all…a lot, right?” Booker waved a hand wide, apparently meaning to encompass the entire island. “The cloning facility, the security, all of it. They thought it might be bioweapon production. They didn’t believe me until I got them photographs, and they _still_ didn’t really believe me, so they’re meant to be coming tomorrow. The power didn’t go down by accident. I took it down, so they could land at the second dock. Keane isn’t technologically inept enough for me to just route around the cameras or anything like that. And it would have been perfectly fine, if Merrick hadn’t invited some random scientists to visit for the weekend because of the Board on his back and then _lost his goddamned mind_.”

Andy collapsed back against the wall, hand over her face. “You fucking _lied_ to me, Book. You said it was your family.”

Booker shrugged. “That wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t – everything.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Andy.”

“The fucking _CIA_ ,” Joe muttered. “Wonderful.”

“What have you got against them?”

“All of post-World War II geopolitics, but I can be more specific.”

“Were you doing it for money?” Nicky asked. “Or something else?”

Booker hesitated. “It’s not – _I_ didn’t know it wasn’t bioweapons, when I got hired. Or that the whole thing wasn’t a cover, somehow.”

“He did it for the money,” Quỳnh said authoritatively. “But maybe not _entirely_ for the money.”

Booker scowled in her direction, but didn’t say anything.

Nile shook her head, and stepped outside. It was full dark, and a new moon; she couldn’t see shit. If she listened, very carefully, she could hear noises in the distance that might be dinosaurs, or might just be birds.

She couldn’t hear anything from the raptor enclosure. That was, weirdly, the thing that got to her. They’d been so amazing, beautiful even, and Andy was so proud of them. A genuine, tiny miracle, somehow more real than the sauropods, or even the azhdarchids. Whether they _should_ have been brought back, or could be cared for, or were even anything like their relatives seventy million years and more gone…they were alive now. Had been alive. Merrick had chosen to build all of this to make them, and then had let them be killed.

She felt her eyes welling up, and pushed the heel of her hand against them, one after the other, hard. Breathed in. Breathed out.

“I want to set watches,” she said, stepping back inside. “Isn’t this the most obvious place for us to be?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. We doubled back.” Andy sounded exhausted. “But watches sounds sensible.”

“I’ll go first,” said Joe, standing up. “Nile, get some sleep.”

“I was going to go first.”

“Get some sleep,” he said again, kindly, and Nile meant to stay awake for a little while – to eat something, at least – but found her eyes closing as soon as she lowered herself to sit on the hard linoleum floor.

*

She was woken up by Andy as dawn started to lighten the sky. She felt stiff and in desperate need of a shower, but the sun was definitely helping. She was _ravenously_ hungry.

Everybody was sprawled out across the floor of the hut. Joe had somehow wrapped himself around Nicky; they both still seemed to be deeply asleep. The sight made Nile giggle like she was fourteen and on a sleepover.

“Yeah, they’ve been cuddling all night,” Andy stage-whispered. “I think it’s time to get moving, though.”

Booker groaned. “I feel like someone was kicking me all night.”

“That was me,” said Quỳnh. “You were snoring.”

Nicky came awake smoothly and with only a mild grimace at the dawn light, propping himself up on the elbow of his good arm. “Time for us to keep going?” He looked back over his shoulder at Joe with an expression of mild surprise.

Joe came awake, as he always did in the field, like he was swimming upwards out of a bog. Nile watched it take a solid thirty seconds for him to register where he was, and register who he was next to. As soon as he did, he threw himself backwards like his hand had been on a hot stove and not Nicky’s hip.

“Morning,” Joe said, a bit too deliberately bright. “No rogue T-rex attack in the night? No madmen with guns?”

“Neither,” said Nile. “Morning, boss.”

“What time are your secret agents hitting the island, Book?” Andy asked.

“About nine,” he said. “Sorry. Oh nine hundred, as they say.”

Andy clapped her hands together. “Great. We’ve got time for coffee. Who wants one?”

They didn’t stick around to savour the coffee. It was average as far as Nile was concerned; usually you had worse doing fieldwork, and military coffee had been best not thought too closely on. Joe wrinkled his nose, but drank it. Nicky made a face and sculled the whole cup like it was medicine, then let Joe check his bandage and change it. Nile went through the whole kit, but the only painkiller they had to give him was some expired ibuprofen.

Andy threw her coffee back as well, and, grim-faced, went out into the raptor enclosure. She came back five minutes later with a nasty scratch on her cheek and an indignantly squawking raptor under each arm.

“They _were_ hiding,” she said to Quỳnh. “But just these two.”

“Is that…safe?” Booker was staring warily at their large toe claws.

“Keep their arms down, they behave,” Andy said airily. “Honey, can you grab the travel cages? They’re in the first storage cabinet – yep.”

“You want to take them with us,” said Joe.

“It’s not up for debate,” Andy replied flatly, and that was that. The cages had straps so Andy and Quỳnh could carry them on their backs; Andy said the raptors got less upset that way than if they were on a cart, not that they could have taken a cart cross-country anyway, if they’d had one. Their tails stuck out like brightly-coloured banners. Nile was touched, but not touched enough to get _too_ close. Joe, who had done his PhD thesis on dromaeosaurids, came very close to losing a finger. While making cooing noises about jawbone evolution.

“Maybe when they are less upset,” Nicky said tactfully, still with an iron grip on Joe’s elbow. Nile was impressed at how fast he’d been; she hadn’t been close enough. 

“Ehhh, they’re not really mad right now,” said Andy. “But science later. Let’s go.”

Outside, the storm had swept through entirely. It was a sunny day, threatening to be hot. It was Sunday, Nile recalled blearily. Somewhere, her mother and brother were at church – no, would be at church, in a few hours. Somewhere they were singing hymns, and here she was tramping across an island full of dinosaurs. This was _not_ where she’d thought studying palaeobotany would get her.

“I still don’t like this plan,” said Joe as they trekked uphill. Andy said through this fence was the _Camarasaurus_ enclosure, the largest on the island for the giant herbivores, and on the other side was the sea, and the secondary dock. The electric fences were still off – Quỳnh checked them as they went through the access gate.

“The alternative is that we steal a helicopter,” Andy said mildly. “Or make nice with the assholes with guns.”

“These are all shitty choices, have you noticed?”

“No kidding.”

“It’s gonna be fine, it’s gonna be _fine_ ,” Booker said. Nile didn’t trust his nervous repetition. “Copley’s a decent guy. They’ll take you off here, interview you, and let you get back to your lives.”

“That already sounds more complicated than it did last night,” said Nicky.

Booker shrugged. “You have to be realistic. They’re here to make sure it isn’t anything they have to worry about.”

Nile caught Joe’s eye. He didn’t look happy. _She_ wasn’t happy. She’d never dealt directly with spooks when she’d been in the Marines, but she’d heard enough about how they liked to do things. Chucking everybody in detention and sorting it out later was the gentle version. And Joe and her were the most likely of anybody here to get the worst of it.

“Nobody here can fly a helicopter, then?” she asked out loud.

“I –” Andy started to say, and stopped short as they came out of the trees into the main, grassy part of the enclosure. It ended at a cliff edge to the left, the sea beyond, and to the right - they should have heard it before they’d seen it, but they’d been too busy talking. Across the way, maybe two hundred yards or so, was activity along the far fenceline. Two of the jeeps, and between them, a flatbed truck with something large and fuzzy on it – Nile squinted, and it resolved into the corpse of one of the great pterosaurs, its wings folded around itself.

Quỳnh muttered something under her breath. “Kozak will want to dissect it, of course. Maybe especially since Merrick – since who knows what will happen to this place, now.”

“Back up, everybody,” Andy muttered. “Slowly. No noise.”

Nile scanned the terrain. She could see drivers in the vehicles, at least one passenger, armed; nobody on foot, at least not visible. They were moving slowly. There were three sauropods in the far distance, browsing on low foliage. She didn’t recognise the trees and had to forcibly stop herself from trying to figure out what they were and whether anything like them could have been around in the late Jurassic. Almost certainly not, so who knew what – no. Focus. One of them had come down on the fence, damaging it; the vehicles were having to divert around. And…there was something _moving_ in the trees, not near the sauropods but along the fenceline, on the other side. Something…big.

“Is that the _Tyrannosaurus_?” Nicky said, in a tone of mild inquiry.

“She got fed two days ago, she’s not going to be hungry.” Quỳnh didn’t sound like she had entirely convinced herself.

“I thought you said she scavenged.”

“Well –”

That was when Queenie _lunged_ , through the broken gap in the fence, right at the dead azhdarchid. Nile had always thought of T-rexes as a bit silly, with those near-vestigial arms. She knew Joe thought they got way too much attention.

Queenie didn’t look silly now. She looked fast, and dangerous, and the only thing holding her back was the fence. It bent. And bent. And snapped. Nile jumped back a foot, instinctively, and stumbled on a tree branch; Joe steadied her.

The _Tyrannosaurus_ was tearing at the corpse on the truck, trying to pull at it. There was shouting. Someone – very brave or very stupid – climbed out of one of the jeeps.

“ _Goddammit_ ,” Andy muttered. “It’s going to have to be the _Gallimimus_ if we want to make it on time –”

“We should just go,” Nile said. “While they’re distracted.” Someone else had climbed out of the other jeep. “Now. Now, if we’re going to do it, it has to be _fast_ –”

Andy gave her a swift, narrow-eyed glance. “Then let’s go.” She started moving; nobody else had time, or maybe breath, to protest.

It was a good idea; it got them halfway across the open part of the enclosure. Nile kept her head down and only looked around to check that everybody was still with them. She was looking straight at the raptor Quỳnh was carrying when it shrieked indignantly, and Andy’s one immediately joined it in protest. Nile winced internally, but the only thing to do was keep moving.

“Those _fucking_ jumped-up turkeys,” Booker panted. “Can’t you keep them quiet?”

“Not the time, Book,” Andy shot back. Nile actually saw Joe open his mouth to be more combative than that, and then think better of it. She risked a glance back. Queenie looked to have got about half of the azhdarchid off the truck. There was somebody lying on the ground, unmoving. A loud _crack_ sounded and Queenie reared back – the power to the electric fence was back on. And now there was –

“They have seen us,” Nicky said, very urgently; he was half cut-off by the noise of the jeep revving.

“This way!” Joe yelled, and turned in the direction of the sauropods. They were reacting to the commotion, heads raised, calling to each other, surprisingly high-pitched for their size. Nile could see that Joe was trying to go between them and the cliff-edge, use them as a screen. It might have worked if whoever was driving the jeep hadn’t gunned it _under_ one of them, like a madman, and if one of the other ones – a larger adult – hadn’t lashed out with its tail. Nile wasn’t sure if it was the force of the blow or the driver’s reaction that sent the car spinning, spinning – stopping, right in front of them, trapping them between it and the edge of the cliff, only two or three metres away now. The driver stumbled out; he was dressed like the security team who’d ambushed them in the azhdarchid enclosure. All Nile could see was the gun in his hand. He was raising it.

“ _Scientists_ , you never do what you’re told,” he said with venom, and then Joe tackled him around the waist, right to the ground. The gun skidded, skidded, and flew over the edge of the cliff. Nile wobbled; she wasn’t shaking, she realised, the ground was. The ground was _falling_. The first chunks at the cliff edge fell away. She scrambled back, and back, and hit the car. Everybody was scrambling, and the raptors were screaming, and dirt was splashing into the water a _long_ way below, and she saw, very clearly, that the security man kept holding onto Joe as they started to go over the edge. She lunged, but Andy held her back.

When the noise and the dust cleared, incredibly, Joe was still there, half over the fresh cliff-edge; Nicky had him by the shirt, but Nile could see he wasn’t getting a proper grip with his injured arm. Everything looked like a freshly-begun trench at a dig site; ready to be brushed away, nothing solid.

Nicky was slipping, very gradually. Nile lunged again and this time Andy let her go; she got one of his legs, and Booker got the other. They hung on as Joe came slowly up over the edge, wriggling bit by bit, climbing more than being pulled. The guard wasn’t with him.

They all edged back as small bits of cliff kept crumbling away. Once they were a couple of metres back, by the car, Joe got up onto his knees, then half-collapsed forward onto Nicky. Nicky pulled him upright just enough to – Nile let go of his leg and backed away from the blast zone – plant a firm and very emphatic kiss on Joe’s mouth.

“Is this really the time?” said Booker. Nile whacked him in the shoulder, even though she was thinking it too.

“Hey, boss,” she said, when they were done. “Maybe a little more careful next time.”

Joe laughed shortly, getting to his feet. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“That was _way_ too close,” Andy said, as they all dusted themselves off. “Keane didn’t make it?”

Joe looked back over his shoulder, his face grim. “No, he – no.”

Booker swore. “Ten minutes until they’re at the dock. I should be there.”

Nile ignored him to swing into the driver’s seat of the car; the keys were still in the ignition, and it was still running. The sauropods had cleared off, and so had Queenie. The flatbed truck was tipped on its side. She couldn’t, right now, see anyone else outside a vehicle

“No,” Quỳnh was saying. “They’re early – come along, you can see the dock from here.”

“Not that close!” Andy protested.

“Eh, I think it was just that section ready to go,” said Joe. “Ah, fuck.”

Nile stuck her head out. “What now?”

“There are a few more people, maybe, than Booker made it sound like there would be,” Nicky said; he was already getting in the car. “And they have guns. _More_ guns.”

“You know what?” Joe said. “No. We’re not going down there. _Nope._ ”

“But –” Booker started.

“ _Do_ any of us know how to fly a helicopter?” Nicky asked, over him.

“I do. And now I think about it,” Andy said slowly, “I think that was the whole security team, so if we just go back to base…”

“Well, get on in,” Nile said, nodding to Joe. “Let’s not wait around.”

*

Nile held her breath when they went past the other vehicles, but nobody moved.

“I hope they’re not chasing Queenie,” Andy said.

“I should –” Booker said, looking back over his shoulder, but everybody else made loud _no_ noises and he left it at that.

The main gate into this enclosure had been left open, and they drove on through. Nile’s shoulders were still up around her ears the whole way. None of this had been easy so far. It was only a twenty-minute drive. They’d spent most of the last day going in big circles on foot.

When they got close to the main site, Andy directed her around the side again, to the helicopter pad. _This_ time, there was nobody to stop them.

“I _am_ a bit sad I’m not going to get to see Kozak’s face when the CIA turn up,” said Quỳnh.

“You know what, I’ll live without it,” said Andy. “But I don’t want to leave her with the animals. Or the CIA – the animals with the CIA, I mean.” She caught Nile’s eyes in the car mirror. “But…”

“We understand why you would want to stay,” Nicky said. “But – forgive me – we were invited here for a quiet weekend, and instead we have been chased, shot at, had some close encounters with very large and angry animals, and nearly fallen off a cliff.” He was looking pale, and there was a trickle of fresh blood down his arm.

“Oh, I’m getting _you_ three out,” Andy said at once; Nile saw Joe’s shoulders relax. “I’m just – not sure what will be here when we come back.”

Quỳnh grimaced; Nile was pretty sure she thought they wouldn’t be able to come back. But it wasn’t going to help to say it.

Nile wasn’t really sure the helicopter would be there until it was. It was eerily quiet, nobody else around. Booker had said they would be trying to get all the systems back online.

“Subhanallah,” Joe said, in one big exhale of breath, as they got out of the car. “I think we’re getting out.”

“I still gotta do the numbers and check the fuel,” Andy said, already swinging herself up into the cockpit. “It’s going to be dicey on weight…let me do some numbers.”

“We’re not leaving them,” Quỳnh said, folding her arms and looking down at the two cages full of indignant raptors. “Who knows what Kozak will do.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it, honey!”

Nile asked Joe and Nicky to help her check the perimeter, unable to sit still, but it stayed quiet until the rotor was going and Andy was telling them all to get onboard. It was even more crowded, with two extra people and the raptor cages. This time, Joe sat next to Nicky, and Nile sat opposite them, beside Quỳnh. Booker was crowded into a corner, looking like he regretted everything. She’d been in here – what, thirty-six hours ago? It was all resolving into a blur. As they rose up from the ground, only the raptors made it seem real. She knew she'd have to process it, but - not yet. Not just yet.

Joe and Nicky were having a quiet conversation about their universities; it turned out that Nicky was based in London. Joe was clearly trying not to sound too excited about that. Nile smiled, and tried not to listen in too hard; pretty much impossible when they were all on headsets, but it was the spirit of the thing.

She let herself lean against the window. There were seabirds between them and the sparkling ocean.

“Hey,” she whispered to the raptors. “It’s your cousins.” They didn’t seem impressed.

“So,” Andy said, when Joe and Nicky ran out of things they wanted to say to each other with four other people, including Joe’s PhD student, pointedly not listening in. “I never asked. Did you come to any conclusions about the park?”

“More money than sense,” said Nile. “And nobody’s thought enough about the environment, not just the animals. But…” She remembered everything, holding the awful parts lightly; the way the sauropods had risen above them, the way the azhdarchid had moved, like nothing she’d ever known, the intelligence in the raptors’ eyes. “I’m not sure I’m sorry it exists.”

“They need more feathers,” said Joe.

“The dinosaurs are fine,” said Nicky. “I still do not think creating them was very ethical, and for display – certainly not. But they should be cared for now they exist.” He shook his head. “The humans, however – where do I _start_?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this you should also check out [this fic about Jurassic Park hiring an animal handler](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5199038). 
> 
> Thanks to rhythmia for chatting to me about a disparity in accent descriptions (which have now been changed). 
> 
> Written for [this kink meme prompt](https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/8523.html?posted=1&thread=3134027#cmt3167051), apologies to the OP that it turned into gen-action-movie-with-a-Kaysanova-subplot rather than full-on Joe/Nicky. 
> 
> Original prompt:
> 
> _Joe/Nicky, Jurassic Park AU. Merrick has created a theme park full of cloned dinos (ofc created by Kozak. She wants that Nobel). After some problems arise he's forced to invite paleontologist!Joe and a Nicky (paleobotanist? philosopher? idk you decide) to make a safety assessment. Everything goes to shit. Dinos are loose and Merrick wants no witnesses to his failure, so he sends Keane to take care of any loose ends._
> 
> _Bonus for married dino handlers Andy & Quỳnh, paleontology PhD student Nile, and long suffering tech guy Booker._


End file.
